Architect and Dwell on Design Los Angeles speaker Cory Buckner’s forthcoming book, Crestwood Hills: The Chronicle of a Modern Utopia, revisits the obstacles faced by the Mutual Housing Association (MHA) in 1947, as they worked to develop a utopian, post–World War II community in Brentwood, California. The struggling Crestwood Hills project (originally called the Mutual Housing Tract) eventually put the MHA on the map as the only successful large-scale modern housing cooperative in the west. The cooperative hired Southern California modernist architects A. Quincy Jones and Whitney R. Smith to design 28 floor plans to offer its members.

The Dutch designer made quite an impact today during her presentation at Design Indaba, Cape Town, South Africa’s premier conference focused on creativity, ideas and discourse. “I’m fighting for new industrial values,” she said. “There’s too much shit design, too much shopping without conscience.”